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Tag: book quotes

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“Loserthink” Quotes

I recently read “Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America” by Scott Adams. Below are the quotes I found most interesting (with Kindle page numbers.) If you like the quotes, buy the book.

The risk of mockery changes behavior. I would go so far as to say it is one of history’s most powerful forces. Location 104-105 

If all you know is how many times someone hit a target, it is loserthink to judge how accurate they are. You also need to know how many times they missed. Location 219-221 

it is a bad idea to trust the majority of experts in any domain in which both complexity and large amounts of money are involved. Location 224-224 

When lots of money and lots of complexity are in play, fraud is nearly guaranteed. Location 231-232

it is nearly impossible to mock a good idea unless you also lie about its nature or leave out important context. Mockery only succeeds in persuading against absurd beliefs. Location 290-291 

The technological change that broke the news business was our ability to measure audience reaction to every headline and every variation of every story. Once you can reliably measure the income potential of different approaches to the news, the people who manage the news have to do what works best for profitability or else they are abandoning their responsibilities to shareholders. On top of that, executive compensation is determined by profit performance. From the moment technology allowed us to know which kinds of content influenced viewership the most, the old business model of the news industry was dead media walking. Location 328-332 

Being absolutely right and being spectacularly wrong feel exactly the same. Location 357-358 

You and I are often penalized for what other people think we are thinking. Location 379-379 

If you are certain you know the inner thoughts of a stranger, that’s a sign you might have too much confidence in your opinion. Location 413-414 

If you are dismissing your critics with labels they would not assign to themselves, you might be engaged in loserthink. Location 462-462 

People who have good arguments use them. People who do not have good arguments try to win by labeling. Location 464-464 

No matter the topic, all sides typically believe they have the right facts and the other side is delusional. Location 491-492 

The productive way to think of your ego is to consider it a tool, as opposed to a reflection of who you are on some core level. Location 501-502 

If you think your ego is a tool, you can choose to dial it up when needed and dial it down when it would be an obstacle. Location 502-503 

The sweet spot for self-confidence involves operating with a belief that you can do more than the available evidence suggests, but not so much more that it would be crazy. Location 505-506

The world is not a fair place, and there is a good chance the people you are dealing with did not get to where they are because of their intelligence, hard work, and character. Location 514-515

Learn how to breathe properly, inhaling through your nose, exhaling through your mouth, and lowering your diaphragm when you inhale, as opposed to shallow breathing in your chest. Location 523-524

Effectiveness is more important than ego. Location 610-610 

Note how other people’s embarrassments mean little to you when you are an observer. That’s how much your embarrassments mean to them: nothing. Location 654-655 

When you combine a human brain that is wired to notice problems with a press that is incentivized to present stories involving huge problems, you can easily start imagining that the world is falling apart in a variety of fatal ways. And that worldview might limit your ability to appreciate all the things going right. Location 687-688 

It is helpful to think of your mind as having limited shelf space. If you fill that space with negative thoughts, it will set your mental filters to negativity and poor health, and there will be no space left for healthy, productive, and uplifting thoughts. Location 703-705

The thoughts you allow into your head are the code that programs your mind and body. Location 708-709 

If you are having trouble keeping negative thoughts from your mind, don’t try to “not think” about them. That just makes you think about them more. Instead, find the most positive and “sticky” thoughts you can imagine, and focus on them until your mental shelf space is filled. Location 717-719 

As a rule, we can’t always tell the difference between the people who are far smarter than us and the people who are dumber. Both groups make choices we can’t understand. Location 738-739 

One of the most normal situations in the world is that people like the same thing (in this case Las Vegas) for wildly different reasons. In politics too, people can support the same candidate for wildly different reasons. Location 784-785 

The first way history is not real is that whoever is in charge gets to write history any way they like. And the way they like it is whatever way keeps them in power and looking awesome. Location 816-818

Every government invents its own version of history to brainwash their population. Location 827-828

We are raised to assume we are the lucky ones who learn accurate history while evil leaders elsewhere are duping their citizens. I hope you can see how unlikely it is that any country is presenting history to its children in an objective way. Location 828-830

The trouble happens when people try to manage events in the present to fix the past. Location 850-851

From a persuasion perspective, history can be a useful tool. If I can make you feel guilty for something your demographic group did to mine, I might be able to influence you in a way that is good for me. Location 852-853

In the long run, nothing persuades like success. Location 872-872 

Our tiny brains don’t have the capacity to grasp the complexities of life and then process that knowledge to make smart decisions. We only think we can. Location 893-894

What we do instead of rational decision-making is employ a sloppy form of pattern recognition to make sense of our world. Location 894-895

We can’t tell the difference between valid patterns that might predict something useful and something that simply reminds us of something else but means nothing. Location 899-900

We humans are not good at knowing which history is the one that will repeat. Location 928-929

Life is messy and complicated, and the situations we encounter often remind us of multiple histories. But which of those histories is the one that is predictive? Location 929-930

History repeats until it doesn’t. And you never know when the “doesn’t” phase starts. Location 946-946

Belief in slippery slopes is loserthink. It is more useful to look at forces and counterforces to see where things are likely to end up. Location 1001-1002 

Whoever is hired to work on the new version of the software will call the person who worked on the last version an idiot. Location 1063-1063 

Whenever you are talking to an expert in any realm, be aware that the next expert is likely to tell you the work done by the last expert looked like a monkey pounding a keyboard with a banana. And the expert after that will be just as rough on the prior expert, all the way to infinity. If experts are routinely skeptical of other experts, shouldn’t you be skeptical of experts too? Location 1070-1072 

The best solution to a problem is often unrelated to who is at fault. Location 1103-1103 

You can often know you are heading in the right direction, which matters a lot, while the precision of your estimates is secondary. Location 1164-1165 

Both sides are right about the other being irrational, but wrong about themselves being rational. Location 1183-1183 

The more you care about a topic, the more susceptible you are to assigning meaning to coincidences. Location 1298-1298 

If you are genuinely trying to understand the world, please avoid judging entire groups by their worst members. Location 1340-1341 

The business model of the free press depends on reinforcing the ideas that each side of the political divide in the United States is as bad as the worst 5 percent. Location 1342-1343 

If I had to pick one defining characteristic that separates the successful from the unsuccessful, it would be luck. But if I had to pick two defining characteristics, the other one would be a sense of control. Successful people, and people who will someday be successful, seem to believe they can steer their fate by their actions. Whether they are right about that or not, it’s a winning mindset. People who think they control their situations will put more effort into doing so. Location 1456-1459 

If you take full responsibility for your outcomes, even while knowing much of it depends on luck, that’s how rich people think. Location 1472-1473 

Certainty isn’t a good indication of rightness for any complicated situation. Location 1504-1504 

Capitalism is similar to both science and fishing in that it is largely a failure machine. Most startups fail, for example, and most companies eventually go out of business, one way or another. But while all that failing is happening, employees are getting paid, vendors are selling products and services to the doomed business while it lasts, and the economy chugs along. You only need a small percentage of companies to succeed in order to have a strong economy. Location 1512-1515 

The reality is that entrepreneurs are making educated guesses and talking themselves into a degree of certainty that the facts do not support. Location 1517-1518 

Being wrong and yet confident is a good description of the human condition. Location 1520-1520 

Our irrational confidence makes sense if you assume humans evolved to have traits that help us survive. Our world rewards action over inaction, Location 1525-1526 

Real experts are likely to give you advice that is similar or at least compatible. Location 1597-1597 

When people ask you if the ends justify the means, they are trying to frame themselves as the moral player in the conversation while framing you as the unethical weasel. Don’t answer the trick question. Instead, restate the question in this form before answering: I think you mean: Are the benefits greater than the costs? Location 1607-1609 

The best response to a bad analogy is to say you don’t address analogies because those are different situations by definition, but you would be happy to address the costs and benefits around your topic. Location 1622-1624 

In the business world, a project that doesn’t pay for itself in two to three years is generally a bad idea. Location 1736-1737 

We humans are not good at predicting. And any notion that we have developed that superpower, in light of all observations to the contrary, is pure loserthink. Location 1800-1801 

In general, when you see a lot of energy in a particular area, spread across multiple companies, the technology or industry is likely to stay around even if the players change. Location 1811-1813 

Don’t assume you can tell the difference between actual knowledge and your own confirmation bias. Location 2025-2025 

A more productive way of thinking about your experience in this life is that you are what you do. Location 2030-2031 

Dwelling on the negative is expensive in terms of your social life, your mental health, and even your career success. People like to be around positive people, for all the right reasons. Location 2036-2037 

if I need to talk about something negative, I pair it with at least one positive thought. Location 2040-2040 

Never be yourself if you can make yourself into something better through your conscious actions. You are what you do. Location 2046-2047 

Every culture has its own feelings about success. I call that cultural gravity. If your culture celebrates success, you have low cultural gravity, and you can rise according to your talents and efforts. But if your culture disapproves of success, you’ll feel it dragging you back to earth every time you try to succeed. Location 2444-2446 

If you allow the opinions of unsuccessful people in your culture to hold you back, you’re engaged in loserthink. Location 2467-2468 

Waiting until you know how to do something exactly right is a poor strategy. You could be waiting forever. Better to jump in, make your mistakes, and see what kind of free assistance that attracts. Location 2476-2478 

We are a species that makes one irrational decision after another and then we cover our tracks by concocting “reasons” after the fact. In other words, we are not so much a rational species as a species that experiences the illusion of being rational. Location 2623-2625 

Your persistent belief in your own rationality is the primary illusion that controls your life. Location 2626-2627 

One big problem with judging people by their mistakes is that what you are actually doing is judging people by the mistakes you are aware of. The people you have judged to be angels might simply be better, or luckier, at getting away with their transgressions against humanity. That would result in an inaccurate ranking of human beings on your personal judgment scale. There’s no point in being a judgmental person if you can’t accurately rank people. That’s just guessing. Location 2668-2671 

The Twenty-Year Rule Let’s stop blaming each other for things that happened more than twenty years ago. Humans change a lot in two decades. Location 2762-2763 

Once you learn to embrace the realization that being right and being wrong feel exactly the same, you’re halfway out of your mental prison. Location 2812-2813 

State ONE thing you believe on this topic that you think I do NOT believe. Location 2854-2854 

When people are experiencing cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias (which is our normal human state), they tend to use what I call laundry list persuasion. That happens when none of the evidence is persuasive on its own, so there is an attempt to make up for the shortfall with quantity. The idea here is that if one piece of evidence has zero credibility, ten pieces of evidence with zero credibility add up to something real. Location 2869-2871 

Always talk first about the points on which you agree, to set the tone and establish yourself as a reasonable voice. Location 2888-2889 

You, rather than pointing out the omission, ask your critic to describe what the future would look like under their preferred plan. Location 2911-2911 

If you liked the quotes, buy the book.

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“How To Think Like A Roman Emperor” Quotes

I recently read “How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius” by Donald J. Robertson. Below are the quotes I found most interesting (via Kindle page numbers). If you like the quotes, buy the book here.

Anxiety largely consists of the belief, for example, that “something bad is going to happen,” (Location 136-136) 

CBT and Stoicism have some fundamental psychological assumptions in common, particularly the “cognitive theory of emotion,” which holds that our emotions are mainly determined by our beliefs. Anxiety largely consists of the belief, for example, that “something bad is going to happen,” (Location 134-136)

Socrates used to say that death is like some prankster in a scary mask, dressed as a bogeyman to frighten small children. The wise man carefully removes the mask and, looking behind it, he finds nothing worth fearing. (Location 242-243)

Marcus wrote that nobody is so fortunate as not to have one or two individuals standing by his deathbed who will welcome his demise. (Location 336-338)

The Stoics observed that often those who are most desperate to flee death find themselves rushing into its arms. (Location 353-354)

Zeno founded his own school in a public building overlooking the agora known as the Stoa Poikile, or “Painted Porch,” where he used to vigorously pace up and down as he discoursed on philosophy. The students who gathered there were originally known as Zenonians but later called themselves Stoics, after the stoa, or porch. It’s possible the name “Stoic” also hints at the practical, down-to-earth nature of the philosophy. (Location 418-421)

Our initial automatic feelings are to be viewed as natural and indifferent. (Location 554-554)

Epictetus, in typical Stoic fashion, continually warned his students not to confuse academic learning with wisdom. (Location 620-621)

When animals are alarmed by the appearance of danger, they take flight, but after they have escaped, their anxiety soon abates and they return to grazing in peace once again. By contrast, the human capacity for thought allows us to perpetuate our worries beyond these natural bounds. (Location 838-841)

Stoic philosophy, which teaches us to accept our involuntary emotional reactions, our flashes of anxiety, as indifferent: neither good nor bad. What matters, in other words, isn’t what we feel but how we respond to those feelings. (Location 887-889)

We usually think of rhetoric as something used to manipulate other people. We tend to forget we’re doing it to ourselves as well, not only when we speak but also when we use language to think. (Location 930-931)

Clients suffering from anxiety should write “decatastrophizing scripts” in which they describe distressing events factually, without strong value judgments or emotive language. (Location 978-979)

One day, as Agrippinus was preparing to dine with his friends, a messenger arrived announcing that the Emperor Nero had banished him from Rome as part of a political purge. “Very well,” said Agrippinus, shrugging, “we shall take our lunch in Aricia,” the first stop on the road he would have to travel into exile. (Location 1015-1017)

Anger is nothing but temporary madness. (Location 1096-1096)

One of [method] is to wait until our feelings have naturally abated and then calmly consider what someone wise would do in a similar situation. (Location 1101-1102)

One of Aesop’s fables, which says that each of us is born with two sacks suspended from our neck: one filled with the faults of others that hangs within our view and one hidden behind our back filled with our own faults. (Location 1176-1178) 

A cheerful acceptance of that hindrance is required, along with a tactful shift to doing what circumstances allow (Location 1298-1298)

Writing down the virtues possessed by a hypothetical wise man or woman, or those we aspire to ourselves, is usually a very beneficial exercise. (Location 1358-1359) 

You can ask yourself these three very simple questions: 1. What did you do badly? 2. What did you do well? 3. What could you do differently? (Location 1414-1418)

People still confuse pleasure with happiness. (Location 1544-1544) 

“Nothing that is really good and admirable,” cautioned Arete, “is granted by the gods to men without some effort and application.”(Location 1567-1568)

From the Stoic perspective Hercules remained cheerful, despite the terrible things he endured. He enjoyed a profound sense of inner satisfaction knowing that he was fulfilling his destiny and expressing his true nature. His life had something far more satisfying than pleasure: it had purpose. (Location 1594-1596) 

the goal of his life is not pleasure but action. (Location 1621-1621)

Socrates had likewise claimed, paradoxically, that those who practice self-control actually obtain more pleasure from things like food and drink than those who indulge in them to excess. (Location 1772-1773)

The same principle, that self-awareness disrupts the automatic quality of the behavior, can be very helpful when you actually want to break a bad habit. (Location 1877-1878)

Set aside ten minutes each day to write stories for your children. (Location 2001-2002)

Epictetus told his Stoic students to imagine they’re guests at a banquet being handed a sharing plate, not greedily holding on to it and scoffing the lot but politely taking an appropriate share and then handing the rest along. (Location 2016-2017)

Be grateful for external things without becoming overly attached to them. (Location 2018-2018)

By focusing instead on the limits of your pain, whether in terms of duration or severity, you can develop a mind-set that’s more oriented toward coping and less overwhelmed by worry or negative emotions about your condition. (Location 2166-2168)

Dependence on being able to escape from stressful situations just creates its own problems. (Location 2727-2728)

He asked a group of college students to spot the times during a four-week period when they began to worry about something and to respond by postponing thinking about it any further until a specified “worry time” later in the day. Using this simple technique, the subjects were able to reduce the time spent worrying by almost half, and other symptoms of anxiety were also reduced. (Location 2788-2791)

The steps to follow in worry postponement build upon the general framework that should be familiar to you by now: 1. Self-monitoring: Be constantly on the lookout for early warning signs of worry, such as frowning or fidgeting in certain ways—this awareness alone will often derail the habit of worrying. 2. If you are unable to address your anxiety immediately using Stoic techniques, postpone thinking about it until your feelings have abated naturally, returning to the problem at a specified “worry time” of your choosing. 3. Let go of the thoughts without trying to actively suppress them—instead, just tell yourself you’re setting them aside temporarily to come back to them later at a specified time and place. Cognitive distancing techniques can be helpful in this regard. On a piece of paper to remind yourself of the thing you’re worried about, then fold it up and put it in your pocket to address later. 4. Return your attention to the here and now, expanding your awareness through your body and your surroundings, and try to notice small details you’d overlooked before. Worry goes chasing after future catastrophes and therefore requires inattention to the present moment. Become grounded in the here and now instead: “Lose your mind and come to your senses!” 5. Later, when you return to the worry, if it no longer seems important, you might just leave it alone. Otherwise, visualize the worst-case scenario or feared outcome that’s making you anxious, using the technique of imaginal exposure or premeditation of adversity. 6. Use cognitive distancing by telling yourself “It’s not things that upset me but my judgments about them.” (Location 2801-2808)

Decatastrophize by describing the feared event in objective terms, without emotive language or value judgments. Remind yourself of its temporary nature by asking “What next?” and considering how things will move on over time. (Location 2808-2810) 

Stoics believed that anger is a form of desire: “a desire for revenge on one who seems to have done an injustice inappropriately,” (Location 3008-3009) 

Modern cognitive theories of anger, which typically define it as based upon the belief that a rule that is personally important to you has somehow been violated. (Location 3011-3012) 

We might say that anger typically consists in the desire to harm someone because we think they’ve done wrong and deserve to be punished. (Location 3009-3010) 

Anger stems from the idea that an injustice has been committed, or someone has done something they shouldn’t have done. (Location 3012-3013) 

1. Self-monitoring. Spot early warning signs of anger, to nip it in the bud before it escalates. For example, you might notice that your voice begins to change, or that you frown or your muscles tense, when you’re beginning to grow angry, or you may think of someone’s actions as unjust or in violation of a personal rule. (“How dare she say that to me!”) 2. Cognitive distancing. Remind yourself that the events themselves don’t make you angry, but rather your judgments about them cause the passion. (“I notice that I am how to respond to the situation. Take a breath, walk away, and come back to it a few hours later. If you still feel like you need to do something, then calmly decide upon the best response; otherwise, just let it go and forget about it. 4. Modeling virtue. Ask yourself what a wise person such as Socrates or Zeno would do. What virtues might help you to respond wisely? In your case, it might be easier to think of a role model you’re more familiar with, like Marcus Aurelius or someone you’ve encountered in your own life. (“A wiser person would try to empathize, put themselves in her shoes, and then exercise patience when they’re responding…”) 5. Functional analysis. Picture telling myself ‘How consequences of following anger versus following reason and exercising virtues such as moderation. (“If I let my anger guide me then I’ll probably just yell at her and get into another argument, and things will get a lot worse over time until we’re not speaking anymore. If I wait until I’ve calmed down and then try to listen patiently, though, it might be difficult at first but it will probably start to work better with practice, and once she’s calmed down maybe she’ll begin listening to my perspective.”) (Location 3016-3038)

One of the most common mistakes we make is trying to challenge our angry thoughts when we’re not in the best frame of mind to do so. Instead, use these thinking strategies beforehand, in advance of facing situations that might provoke anger, or after you’ve taken time to regain your composure. (Location 3039-3041) 

It’s natural to mourn—even some animals grieve the loss of their young. But there are those who go beyond the natural bounds of grief and let themselves be swept away entirely by melancholy thoughts and passions. The wise man accepts his pain, endures it, but does not add to it. (Location 3332-3334)

Leaves that the wind scatters to the ground, Such are the generations of men. (Location 3339-3340) 

Everything is different, but underneath it’s all the same: anonymous individuals marrying, raising children, falling sick, and dying. Some fight wars, feast, work the land, and trade their wares. Some flatter others or seek to be flattered, suspect their fellows of plotting against them, or hatch their own plots. Countless among them engage in intrigues, pray for the death of others, grumble at their lot, fall in love, pile up fortunes, or dream of high office or even a crown. How many individuals whose names we’ll never know, their lives extinguished, lie forgotten, as if they had never been born at all? Yet turn your thoughts to the mighty, and what difference does it make? Death comes knocking at the king’s palace and the beggar’s shack alike.(Location 3355-3360)

It’s vanity to worry about how history will record your actions. (Location 3370-3371) 

I’m surrounded by people who are overly concerned with what future generations will think of them. They might as well lament the fact that centuries ago, before their birth, their names were utterly unknown. The lips of mankind can grant you neither fame nor glory worth seeking. What matters is how I face this moment, which shall soon be gone. (Location 3371-3373)

Fear of death does us more harm than death itself because it turns us into cowards, whereas death merely returns us to Nature. (Location 3385-3386) 

To practice death in advance is to practice freedom and to prepare oneself to let go of life gracefully. (Location 3391-3392)

after darkness and ignorance come arts and sciences, then the inevitable descent once again into darkness and ignorance. (Location 3428-3428)

The universe is a single living being, with a single body and a single consciousness. Every individual mind a tiny particle of one great mind. Each living creature like a limb or organ of one great body, working together, whether they realize it or not, to bring about events in accord with one great impulse. Everything in the universe so intricately woven together, forming a single fabric and chain of events. (Location 3456-3456)

Man was meant to be like this: striving his whole life with patient endurance to cultivate the pure light of wisdom within himself and allowing it to shine forth for the benefit of others. Alone and yet at one with the community of fellow men around him, living wisely and in concord with them. (Location 3476-3478)

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“Have A Little Faith” Quotes

I recently read “Have a Little Faith” by Mitch Albom. Below are the quotes I found most interesting.

“Faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe.” (44)

“No matter how far they try to go the other way – to extend life, play around with the genes, clone this, clone that, live to one hundred and fifty – at some point, life is over. And then what happens? When life comes to an end?”
I shrugged.
“You see?”
He leaned back. He smiled.
“When you come to the end, that’s where God begins.” (79)

“[The doctor said, I envy you] because when you lose someone you love, you can curse God. You can yell. You can blame him. You can demand to know why. But I don’t believe in God. I’m a doctor! And I couldn’t help my brother!”
“He was near tears. ‘Who do I blame?’ he kept asking me. ‘There is no God. I can only blame myself.’”
The Reb’s face tightened, as if in pain.
“That,” he said, softly, “is a terrible self-indictment.”
Worse than an unanswered prayer?
“Oh yes. It is far more comforting to think God Listened and sadi no, than to think that nobody’s out there.” (82)

Gandhi said, “The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.” (85)

“Most religions warn against war, yet more wars have been fought over religion than perhaps anything else. Christians have killed Jews, Jews have killed Muslims, Muslims have killed Hindus, Hindus have killed Buddhists, Catholics have killed Protestants, Orthodox have killed pagans, and you could run that list backward and sideways and it would still be true. War never stops; it only pauses.” (90)

“But so many people wage wars in God’s name.
“Mitch,” the Reb said, “God does not want such killing to go on.”
Then why hasn’t it stopped?
He lifted his eyebrows.
“Because man does.” (91)

“He refused to wallow in self-pity. In fact, the worse things got for him, the more intent he seemed on making sure no one around him was saddened by it.” (97)

“I have what I need,” he said, surveying his messy shelves. “Why bother chasing more?” (117)

“We have this photograph, all of us together,” the Reb says. “Whenever I feel the spirit of death hovering, I look at that picture, the whole family smiling at the camera. And I say, ‘Al, you done okay. This is your immortality.’””

“When everyone jumped and cheered at the baseball game, his old-world grandmother stayed seated. He turned and asked why she wasn’t clapping for the big hit. And she said to him, in yiddish, “Albert, is it good for the Jews?” (157)

“Rajchandra was the Indian poet who influenced Gandhi by teaching that no religion was superior because they all brought people closer to God.” (159)

“Napoleon once dismissed religion as “what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.” (196)

“Maybe people who only get chances to do bad, always around bad things, like us, when they finally make something good out of it, God’s happy.” (207)

“When I had a disagreement with someone, and they came to talk to me, I always began by saying, ‘I’ve thought about it. And in some ways maybe you’re right.’” (211)

“You can’t work your way into heaven. Anytime you try and justify yourself with works, you disqualify yourself with works.” (221)

Liked the quotes? Check out the full book here.

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“The Passion Economy” Quotes

I recently read “The Passion Economy: The New Rules For Thriving in the Twenty-First Century” by Adam Davidson. Below are the quotes I found most interesting.

“Most businesses that struggle do so because they fail to understand the value they are (or should be) creating or fail to capture the value they have created.” (22)

“What are you selling? Who most wants it? Why do they want it? How do they pay for it?” (24)

“Pick your customer.” (25)

“Pick your competition.” (27)

“Aim for a product whose price is determined by the value it provides the customer, not by the raw material that is used to make it.” (67)

“For most of the twentieth century, the safest, most lucrative strategy was to be as much like others as possible. In the twenty-first century, the best strategy is to be fully yourself and to highlight your areas of difference from everyone else.” (74)

“The very act of charging considerably more ensures that the kinds of customers who won’t truly value [your company’s] offerings won’t hire them.” (120)

“You have a price, and then you find customers who understand that it is worthwhile to pay that price for the benefits they hope to receive: benefits based on very specialized knowledge.” (122)

“Price should be a bit shocking – a couple of notches higher than the prospective customer was prepared for. You want him to have an uncomfortable moment where he truly has to ask himself if this is worth the investment.” (122)

“Always use the word “investment” to signal that this is not money the client is losing but money he is spending so that he can make more money later.” (122)

“For any business to attract some group of passionate followers, it must contain elements that some people will love and others will dismiss, or even find off-putting.” (140)

“The key to success was not coming up with new things to sell; it was in the efficiency of the operation that was used to make a standard product. The victors in key market areas were not those with the most original products but the companies with the best systems for manufacturing standardized goods.” (166)

“Most (textile) companies kept doing the same, safe thing, right until they collapsed.” (180)

“Do not be a commodity. Do not be easily comparable to other people who have, roughly, the same set of skills and the same background.” (187)

“Write down what you do for a living and then circle those things that bring you real joy.” (243)

“Three core values made work more satisfying for employees and, simultaneously, made them more effective at their jobs: One: people want to feel some sense of autonomy over their work, feel that they can make choices that will have an impact. Two: they want to feel a sense of belonging to the organization they work for. Three: they want to trust their company and their bosses.” (263)

Did you like the quotes? Check out the full book here.

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“The Second Mountain” Quotes

I recently read “The Second Mountain: The Quest For A Moral Life” by David Brooks. Below are the quotes I found most interesting.

“It usually starts with a subculture. A small group of creative individuals finds the current moral ecology oppressive and alienating. So they go back in history and update an old moral ecology that seems to provide a better way to live. They create a lifestyle that others find attractive. If you can create a social movement that people want to join, they will bend their energies and ideas to you.” (8)

“In Irish Murdoch’s words: “Man is a creature who makes pictures of himself and then comes to resemble the picture.” (8)

“America has always had a more individualistic culture than other places, which Tacqueville noticed back in the 1830s. But when individualism becomes the absolutely dominant ethos of a civilization – when it is not counterbalanced with any competing ethos – then the individuals within it may have maximum freedom, but the links between individuals slowly begin to dissolve.” (10)

“Colleges generally ask a person distinguished by fantastic career success to give a speech in which they claim that career success is not that important.” (14)

“Freedom sucks. Political freedom is great. But personal, social, and emotional freedom – when it becomes an ultimate end – absolutely sucks. It leads to a random, busy life with no discernible direction, no firm foundation, and in which, as Marx put it, all that’s solid melts to air. It turns out that freedom isn’t an ocean you want to spend your life in. Freedom is a river you want to get across so you can plant yourself on the other side – and fully commit to something.” (20)

“When you choose to work at a certain company, you are turning yourself into the sort of person who works in that company.” (22)

“The meritocracy is the most self-confident moral system in the world today. It’s so engrossing and seems so natural that we’re not even aware of how it encourages a certain economic vocabulary about non-economic things. Words change their meaning. “Character” is no longer ” (23)

“Acedia is the quieting of passion. It is a lack of care. It is living a life that doesn’t arouse your strong passions and therefore instills a sluggishness of the soul, like an oven set on warm. The person living in acedia may have a job and a family, but he is not entirely grabbed by his own life.” (24)

“When you have nothing but your identity and job title to res on, then you find yourself constantly comparing yourself to others.” (25)

“Every age group in America is less trusting than the one before, and, as Robert Putnam of Harvard points out, that’s for a very good reason: People are less trustworthy. It’s not that perception is getting worse. It’s actual behavior.” (33)

“Individualism, taken too far, leads to tribalism.” (34)

“Once politics becomes your ethnic or moral identity, it becomes impossible to compromise, because compromise becomes dishonor.” (35)

“Suffering that is not transformed is transmitted.” (40)

“The ultimate heart’s desire… is the desire to lose yourself in something or someone.” (45)

“In Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, he tells her, “Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.” (46)

“C.S. Lewis observed, there’s never been a country where people are admired for running away in battle, or for double-crossing people who were kind to them.” (47)

“You have to be loved first so you can understand love, and you have to see yourself actively loving others so that you know you are worthy of love.” (53)

“That’s the paradox of privilege. When we are well-off we chase the temporary pleasures that actually draw us apart. We use our wealth to buy big houses with big yards that separate us and make us lonely. But in crisis we are compelled to hold closely to one another in ways that actually meet our deepest needs.” (57)

“As the theologian Tim Keller puts it, real freedom “is not so much the absence of restrictions as finding the right ones.” (58)

“Alasdair MacIntyre has pointed out, the concept of altruism was invented only in the eighteenth century. Once people decided that human nature is essentially egoist and selfish, then it was necessary to invent a word for when people weren’t driven by selfish desires. But before that, what we call altruism – living for relationships – was just how people lived. It wasn’t heroic or special.” (64)

“If you wanted to generalize a bit, you could say there are six layers of desire:
Material pleasure. Having nice food, a nice car, a nice house.
Ego pleasure. Becoming well-known or rich and successful. Winning victories and recognition.
Intellectual pleasure. Learning about things. Understanding the world around us.
Generativity. The pleasure we get in giving back to others and serving our communities.
Fulfilled love. Receiving and giving love. The rapturous union of souls.
Transcendence. The feeling we get when living in accordance with some ideal.” (67)

“Giving is the primary relationship between on person and another, not the secondary one.” (71)

“Annie Dillard once asked a friend how he knew he was meant to become a painter. “I like the smell of paint,” he replied.” (90)

“Vocations invariably have testing periods – periods when the costs outweigh the benefits – which a person must go through to reach another level of intensity. At these moments, if you were driven by a career mentality you would quit. You’re putting more into this thing than you are getting out. But a person who has found a vocation doesn’t feel she has a choice. It would be a violation of her own nature. So she pushes through when it doesn’t seem to make sense.” (91)

“Lucky is the man who does not secretly believe that every possibility is open to him,” Walker Percy observes.” (98)

“When the expert is using her practical knowledge, she isn’t thinking more, she is thinking less. She has built up a repertoire of skills through habit and has thereby extend the number of tasks she can perform without conscious awareness.” (101)

“The right question is not What am I good at? It’s the harder questions: What am I motivated to do? What activity do I love so much that I’m going to keep getting better at it for the next many decades? What do I desire so much that it captures me at the depth of my being? In choosing a vocation, it’s precisely wrong to say that talent should trump interest. Interest multiplies talent and is in most cases more important than talent.” (111)

“All vocational work, no matter how deeply it touches you, involves those moments when you are confronted by the laborious task. Sometimes, if you are going to be a professional, you just have to dig the damn ditch.” (124)

“There are (at least) two kinds of failure. In the first kind you are good, but other people can’t grasp how good you are. Melville’s Moby-Dick sold only 2,300 copies in its first eighteen months and only 5,500 copies in its first fifty years. It was savaged by reviewers. Some artists have to create the taste by which they will be judged. In the second kind, you fail because you’re not as good as you thought you were, and other people will see it.” (131)

“There’s a moment in many successful careers when the prospect of success tires to drag you away from your source, away from the daemon that incited your work in the first place. It is an act of raw moral courage to reject the voices all around and to choose what you have chosen before. It looks like you are throwing away your chance at stardom, but you are actually staying in touch with what got you there.” (133)

“People don’t become lovely by loving themselves; they become lovely by loving others, by making vows to others, by taking on the load of others and fulfilling those vows and carrying that load. All the dignity and gravity of life is in this surrender.” (143)

“Your personality is the hidden history of the places where love entered your life or was withdrawn from your life. It is shaped by the ways your parents loved you, the ways they did not love you.” (151)

“If the love is to bloom, they have to get to, “This is how I’m crazy.”” (152)

“Society is a massive conspiracy to distract you from the important choices of life in order to help you fixate on the unimportant ones.” (166)

[Frankl says] “Human beings’ primary motivation is not for money or even happiness, but for meaning. We are driven above all to understand the purpose of our lives. Once that is understood even the most miserable conditions cannot upend inner peace.” (208)

“Thomas Merton once wrote that ‘trying to solve the problem of God is like trying to see your own eyeballs.’” (234)

“When people talk about dying to self, they are really talking about dying to old desires and coming alive to a new and better set of desires.” (255)

“Willfulness is the desire to be captain of your own ship. Willingness is the desire to answer a call with a strong response.” (255)

”Pretty soon you end up with what Rabbi Sacks calls ‘pathological dualism,’ a mentality that divides the world between those who are unimpeachably good and those who are irredeemably bad.” (256)

“T.S. Eliot observed, the chief illusion of modern political activity is the belief that you can build a system so perfect that the people in it do not have to be good.” (308)

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